Sermon 20th March 2011. Preacher: Rev. John Paton

Readings: Psalm 40:1-5 and John 16: 16-22

Photocopiers, don't you just love them!

 I was passing the Church Office door, it was after one o'clock, there was still a light on, it was still open, I drifted inside just to check everything was OK. Mary, one of the secretaries, gave me 'the something is not working' look and she took me into the photocopier room. There had been a jam on an important run. She told me she had cleared all the obstructions just as the manual had said, (Mary reads manuals!), but it refused to work. Just for my benefit she went through the process again, just for me to check that she had not missed anything.

            Biff, boff, clunk click, mumble, mumble.

 'There,' she said, 'I've done everything the machine says and if I press this button nothing happens.'

 She pressed the button and you've guessed it, something happened. The blessed machine started to work properly again! We both looked at each other. I just stood there and did that Tommy Cooper thing with the hands, 'Just like that'. Mary picked up the humour right away. 'What is it with you Ministers, you only had to be present and the thing worked right away!' I smiled and shrugged my shoulders and did another Tommy Cooper just for effect.

 In truth, sometimes that is all any of us have to do to help someone.

Just be there, listen, try to understand, sometimes we do not have to do anything.

 It made me think of the difference between presence and absence.

 When someone disappears from your life and there is no one else home when you turn the key in the door, it's not that you expected the one who is not there to be doing something that makes the difference, it's just that you wanted to sense another presence and in truth you only realise that this matters when there is an absence. No wonder they say 'absence makes the heart grow fonder'.

 On our way through Lent, on our way up to Easter, we find passages like the one in John's Gospel today, which are dealing with this specific issue. John 16:16 and we hear Jesus saying 'a little while and you will no longer see me' and again 'a little while and you will see me'. Not surprisingly the disciples struggle with these words, for Jesus is present with them telling them he will be absent and then will be present again and all in a short space of time.

 We, the readers of the gospel, are better informed because we know the story. Jesus is alive and is with them. Jesus is going to be crucified and will die and then is to come back again. John's gospel is deliberately vague here. It is not clear whether the return of his presence is the resurrection - a first coming, or the coming at the end of the world - a second coming. Indeed all the talk of their pain at missing him is couched in terms of another kind of pain.

       Verse 21, 'when a woman is in labour she has pain because her hour has          

       come but when her child is born she no longer remembers the anguish     

       because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you

       have pain now but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no

       one will take your joy from you.'

 Such talk makes many think of the tribulations and pains that the Jewish people expected before a new golden age was ushered in. So it may be that John is telling us that Jesus is talking here about what we would call the 'second coming' but in truth it does not really matter because this whole passage is more than just a kind of historical prophecy concerned about dates and times.

 No, it is about that age old problem with people like Jesus. It is fine when they are present but what do you do when you are more aware of their absence.

 And that is one of the great mysteries of faith, of what it means to believe in something you cannot see and sometimes cannot even feel. John's gospel is very good at these big themes. The whole passage is so precise but yet, so vague!

The language is precise, 'a little while and you will no longer see me and again a little while and you will see me.'

So precise and yet..... so vague and yet so.... applicable to not only Jesus' story but to our own story of faith.

 How often have we felt that Jesus.... or God, for that matter...

How often have we felt that he is with us for a little while

     and then is not with us for a while longer

     and yet we hope and pray he will be with us again?

How often does talk of the presence of God remind us rather of his absence

     and yet does not that absence make our heart grow fonder?

 Just to wrap up the photocopier story. Mary was not altogether pleased with my presence even for that little while, you see I had in some ways complicated things, because she still had to wait in the office. You see, she had called out the engineer and he had said he was on his way! And now she was going to have to face this man and tell him the problem was no more.

 It reminded me of the story of the woman who had locked her keys in the car and called her husband to come from his work with the spare keys only to find that on closer inspection the passenger door was still open. When her friend asked her, 'What did you do? Did you call your husband and tell him the passenger door was open and he would not have to come?' 'Not on your life!' she said. 'I did what any sensible woman would do. I locked the passenger door.'

 Just at that point the engineer appeared in the doorway, still looking flushed from his rush. Mary had to explain that the photocopier was working now. I realised that what was required now was not my presence but my absence and I made myself scarce.

 Is that what God does?

Does God make himself scarce?

 The psalmist in our psalm was waiting patiently for him, indeed, some commentators have it that it is better translated that the psalmist waited and waited for the Lord with a degree of impatience. 'At length,' the metrical psalm that is sung says,

            'at length he did to me incline

            and drew me up from the desolate pit

            out of the miry clay

            and set my feet upon a rock

            making my steps secure

            and he put a new song in my mouth.'

 I find this is how faith goes. There are presences and there are absences

and some of the times when God is meant to be present, God is absent

and some of the times when God is meant to be absent, God is present.

 I'll give you an example of when God is meant to be present.

I am in a church and yet sometimes the best sermons and prayers in the world make no difference. I cannot feel God near. I am just going through the motions. I know I am.

 Other times God is meant to be absent but God is present.

A tsunami wipes out thousands of people in Japan and God has definitely left the building but amongst the debris a life is discovered alive and they dig and struggle and strive until flesh touches flesh and eye catches eye and God is in that moment.

 Today is a strange day. It is the vernal equinox, the springtime moment when the day and nights are equal, 12 hours light and, if you can do the maths, 12 hours darkness. For the next 6 months we are the fortunate ones on whom the sun shines more that our fair share and we dream of summer days gently stretching into forever, it feels like God is present and smiling on us and even every rain cloud is just his sense of humour. I have visited the Equator. I did not like it, every day was the same length and so was every night. I cannot do constant, I need the change, the heights of high summer and the depths of low winter.

 I need to feel God present but also I need to feel God absent,

     less I take his presence for granted,

     less I reckon I can control when God should appear.

The rest is faith I suppose, and hope and

     love ...desperate... devoted love...

     that I pray will not let me go

     whatever I feel.

 I have adapted a little story to finish with.

 Before I do let me do a little postscript to the photocopier. I spoke to Mary yesterday and she wanted to make it quite clear that there was a fault with the sensor!

 Through the snow a little Christian trudged to church, it was cold and miserable and she really could not be bothered. Would her presence be missed she thought. After the service she told the Minister at the door, you know it was one step forward and two steps back to get here. The Minister asked her, 'pray thee child how then did you get here', (a rather old fashioned chap!) 'It was easy,' she said, 'I reckoned no one would miss me so I turned for home! (one step forward to home two steps back to church!)

 You know,

sometimes it is when we think we are moving away from God

and do feel his absence

that we find God waiting for us

as a presence we never expected.  Amen.